The red floor and the many angels, seen and unseen, do not stick in my memory as vividly as the two penguins, stuffed and preserved under a glass bell, which she told me she had had for years. She had never owned a television set; when Nixon and Kennedy were running for the presidency, a friend gave her money to buy a television set so that she could watch their debates. Instead, she bought the penguins and named them for the candidates, who had debated without her attentions.
(from a remembrance by Michael Segers.)
That
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awesome!
I think she might be the greatest woman who ever lived.
ReplyDeleteI'm inclined to agree with you, Ed, especially after reading her obituary in the NY Times, which includes the following:
ReplyDelete"Afterward she became a legend: the woman with the pageboy haircut who looked like W. H. Auden, wrote like James Joyce, strode through the Village in her signature serapes, had breakfast at Bigelow's with Richard Wright, got drunk at the White Horse Tavern with Dylan Thomas, palled around with Truman Capote and Carson McCullers, kept a vast collection of dolls in her Bleecker Street apartment and regaled intimates with tales of her romantic conquests."
*That's* who she looked like!
ReplyDeleteIs there a biography of MY?
I don't see anything listed on what appears to be the most comprehensive MY website: http://home.earthlink.net/~eichfr/youngweb.htm
ReplyDeletePerhaps I've just found my calling?
MY spent 30 years writing an unfinished Eugene Debs biography, maybe someone will spend that long writing hers.
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